Best way to move money from my bank account to my daughters instantly?

Hardware and technical stuff
#1

As part of a cross country move, I need to shut down my bank account in my previous home time and do all of my banking out of our new credit union here. My main bottleneck: is my youngest daugher (an adult) - once in a while she needs some money help (she works as a care giver for severely mentally and physically handicapped people and it does not pay well) and the way we had been handling that is she had an account under my account at my previous bank and I could instantaneously move money into her account if she needed the money ASAP… She also no longer lives in that town and has another bank account in addition to that one (which will be shut down when I shut mine down.)

Paypal has a delay. I know these services have to be careful due to worries about being used for “evil” purposes, but is there a good reliable service preferably with a phone app where I can instantly move money from my bank account to her?

Thanks

#2

We’ve used Venmo. It is tied to your bank account and uses a phone app. I think this is probably the one you’d want to look at.

You just have to be careful, as the way transfers are set up if you send it to the wrong person you are SOL.

#3

Check whether your bank has a mobile app. It may have a simple way to setup another ‘payee’ account and make a EFT pretty quickly. Not really “instant” though, if you really need it faster than “end of business day” than, Venmo or PayPal I guess?

#4

The old timey way was a wire transfer.

#5

Those are both great ideas, thanks.

Yeah, used to do that but these days you have to get to your bank, sign stuff, then it is not immediate. Terrorism Crime etc.

#6

My bank, Ally, uses Zelle, and it worked well the one time I used it. Quick and easy.

#7

Yes Zelle is another one. Our bank offers it too. I’ve used it a few times, it works fine.

#8

Likewise, my partner uses Zelle every month to send me her contribution to shared costs. Might take a day at most to finalize, but it shows up very quickly. Goes across banks, too; she’s on SunTrust and I’m on Bank of America.

I miss the old service her bank used, PopMoney. It wasn’t any better or worse, but it was fun to ask her to POP ME THAT MONAYYY every month.

#9

So how are services like Venmo and Zello making money?

#10

Zelle doesn’t. Instead it is owned jointly by a consortium of banks.

#11

Zelle is owned by a consortium of banks who presumably already do these kinds of transfers and just applied a fancy front end for their customers to use. Apparently they have government any business payment options that may charge fees.

#12

I’m reporting you for Plagiarism Mr Penblade, you shall hear from my lawyers forthwith.

But to expand on that, they reason Zelle has no user costs is because the banks are finding it themselves so they don’t have to pay third parties. Basically they don’t have to pay outside parties like Apple Pay, so the transaction costs are lower.

And in a rare case of the market working, they pass this on to the consumer so it costs you nothing to use.

#13

You could have three accounts at your credit union/bank with one having both you and your daughter. Then each of you could move money into out of the shared account as needed without incurring a cost.

#14

Venmo’s the easiest but if you have a hang up on payment companies (I mean, Venmo is owned by Paypal after all), Zelle is the way to go.

That said, just use Venmo.

#15

What annoys me about both Venmo and Zelle is that you can’t initiate payments from your computer, only from the app.

#16

It won’t help you, but this is one of those times when Canada’s very centralized major banks come in handy. They’ve long had a consortium called Interac, which sounds similar to Zelle, but it’s ubiquitous. You can email money transfer from any bank in Canada, to any bank in Canada with it. From any computer, browser, or bank app. It’s also behind our debit card system, so works for merchants, too. At a fraction of what credit card fees are.

It’s so good, that it takes us forever to get something like Apple Pay Cash. Because there’s no incentive to go outside the existing system. Except you can’t use Interac to send someone money over text or iMessage, so I’m missing a cool feature, dammit! Email is just soooo slow 😉

#17

My daughter already had a Venmo account so I set one up. Very straightforward. Did a test transfer and she had the money almost immediately.

Problem solved - thanks!!!

#18

You can definitely Zelle from a computer. Options are right in my BoA acct.

#19

Maybe it’s bank specific but I definitely can send payments from my account website.

#20

Are you all accessing Zelle through your bank site or somewhere else? Is it only available through some banks?

If Venmo requires me to enter banking info into my phone it’s a non-starter.